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Monday, February 23, 2009

My son likes to argue with us. For example, at the store he'll see a pear and call it an apple, and almost no matter how many times I tell him it's a pear, he'll fire back that it's an apple. I say "almost" because he'll eventually give up and admit that he might be wrong. He also seems to think English is a tonal language like Chinese or Laotian or something, because now he's started correcting things we say with the same word (for example, if I say "dinner" he might throw back a "no, dinner!" with a little change in emphasis).

I actually don't mind the fact that he has an opinion. Given the choice, I'd rather have a son that has a mind of his own than one who is apathetic to everything. That said, I've always assumed that he'll grow out of this at some point, but after a phone call the other day, I'm not so sure.

Our home phone doesn't ring that often, so I was surprised to hear it just before church on a recent Sunday morning. The woman on the other end asked for Jeff. Now, I don't know a lot of things, but I do know that my name isn't Jeff, so I let her know that she'd dialed a wrong number. Rather than the usual apology and hang-up though, she started into a bit of a debate with me about whether she had actually dialed the wrong number. A conversation that should have already been over took several minutes, until I finally convinced her that I am not Jeff and don't live in area code 850. I was getting worried that I'd have to send her my passport or something to prove it.

This was clearly a lady who would call a pear an apple, but to be fair, most of us have a little bit of my son in us, I think. Partly, it might just be hard for us to admit when we're wrong because of pride. Partly, we might fear the consequences of being wrong. In the case of incorrectly dialed phone numbers, the fear is ending up on the line with the same stranger twice (or worse, three times) in a row, especially if you can't figure out whether you have the wrong phone number or just dialed the number incorrectly. Apparently we're so scared of a voice at the other end of the phone line that we use a bit of reverse psychology to get them to think they have the wrong number.

Maybe it's just a societal thing. We're told all the time that backing down is a sign of weakness, but I'd argue that backing down is often the more difficult and prudent thing to do. Of course, a lot of people would disagree with that.